Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [90]
“Look. I’m sorry,” she said, comparing her thigh—the network of shallow bluish veins lent a unique feeling of transparency against the whiteness—with her hand resting on it like some great red spider. Her angry voice spat at me as I basked in a feeling of security that came through my hand. “I want you to stop these false accusations. You said pictures of me—which I find strange. I wouldn’t do that. Do you think we let pictures be taken that can be used as evidence later? I’m not an amateur. Look at this and you’ll see what I mean.”
Abruptly she raised both bands to the base of her scalp and stripped off her hair as easily as if she were peeling a ripe peach. With the long tresses of the wig, which was transformed into a separate creature, she struck my arm sharply, and laying the wig on her thigh, she roughly scratched her short-clipped hair. The bartender, who was looking down at the sink, slightly changed the angle of his head, and in profile he seemed surprisingly broad and muscular. Perhaps because of the light, the area below his sideburns was shaded as if scooped out, maybe the scar from some cut. Was his gloomy expressionlessness only on the surface of his face or did it penetrate beneath … to his very heart … or was it some incurable disease …? Whichever, there was no call to waste any more time here in disregard of its warning. When I withdrew my hand from the girl’s thigh she seemed to notice it for the first time and jerked her leg and glared at me as if she were looking at an enemy.
“I suppose I can’t expect to be invited to your wedding.”
“What’re you going to do? If you’re coming back to the studio it’d better be quick. Time’s about run out.”
The music changed. The moment of silence pierced my ears, and the girl’s last words cast a shadow over the whole bar like the wings of some enormous bird. The two men at the table by the entrance turned in surprise to look in our direction. The next record began with a guitar solo. It merely turned the atmosphere around us a pale white and did nothing to shut off the rest of the bar. I finished the remainder of my rye-and-water as I got down from the stool.
“I’ll be leaving now. I suddenly thought of something I have to do.” As a tip besides the amount I owed, I placed a pile of hundred-yen pieces on the two thousand-yen notes that I had ready. “It’s too bad … since you’re all ready now. But since there seems to be a bit of time left, if it’s all right with you, I’ll let Tashiro here have it. You don’t have anything particular to do, do you?”
The alcoholic blush had spread from Tashiro’s face to his neck; only his nose and his chin, as if separated from the rest of his features by a glass shield, remained whitish. His strange behavior, neither refusing nor accepting, was after all a kind of acceptance.
“You’re a bachelor, I see …” Looking over her shoulder at Tashiro, the girl didn’t even attempt to dissimulate her frankly scornful laugh. “People wouldn’t make fun of you if you’d use the same color of thread to sew the buttons on your shirt.”
But Tashiro remained standing as he was, bolt upright, saying nothing, rubbing the inside of his glasses with the tip of his finger. The bartender, silent as usual, gently dropped before me the paid bill for the drinks, which settled like a huge snowflake, and handed me the change. I passed by the two men at the table, as profoundly engrossed as before in their discussion, but just as I arrived at the door, the girl, noiselessly, had already caught up with me. The dusty smell of cheap cosmetics made me think of her comfortless bed.
“I’ll send you